July 21, 2012

Kitty Wells, First Queen of Country Music

Like its southern sister, reggae music, the folkways inherent in country music songcraft tend to hold onto and remold a good melody when they catch one. The song "Wild Side of Life", by William Warren and Arlie Carter is one of the most famous examples, using the basic 1 / 4 / 5 arrangement from the Carter Family's touching "I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes", which was itself inspired by elder tunes of course; and had already been riffed upon once since the Carters as "The Great Speckled Bird" (a now seemingly antique song on its own) by Roy Acuff. According to writer Bill Malone, the song's co-writer William Warren found inspiration for "Wild Side ... in his memories of a relationship with a younger woman, a 'honky-tonk angel, as it were, who found the glamour of the gay night life' too hard to resist". Hank Thompson's version of the song (recorded on December 11th, 1951, with his new producer Ken Nelson) was now his first charting single since 1949, living three and a half months atop the Billboard country chart in the spring and early summer of 1952. Hank Thompson / The Wild Side of Life

Pretty soon, down in southern Louisiana a record was cut by a young lady from Washington, Louisiana, name of Al Montgomery and prepped for release by author Jay Miller on his own Feature label. Through a quirk of fate, Montgomery never got a chance to break through with her version, as the song fell into the 'right hands at the right time' to make it the biggest thing ever.

The version of "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels" heard below comes from the rare 1983 lp on Flyright records (Fly 596) documenting various sessions at Jay Miller's Crowley, Louisiana studio and/or released on his label. The liner notes by Bruce Bastin pick up the story:

"{This} track...comes from a rather worn test pressing, the only known copy to have survived from the sole release by... Al Montgomery. {Jay} Miller ran up his usual 500 78's. Present when the discs arrived, quite by chance, was Kitty Wells' manager, Troy Martin. He had been introduced to Miller by phone through Lefty Frizzell and Martin helped place Miller's songs to win five BMI awards. As it happened, the topside of this obscure 78 was to become the biggest of them all. Troy Martin took two copies with him to Nashville to play for Kitty Wells, whom Jay Miller knew from Louisiana Hayride shows. The following night Kitty recorded it and Troy phoned Miller to tell him not to order any more on Feature. Perhaps many of those still in the shop were never sold either, for the disc has never been found. IT WASN'T GOD WHO MADE HONKY-TONK ANGELS by Kitty Wells on Decca stayed at No. 1 on the charts for 18 weeks. In Miller's office, behind his desk, the gold disc shares wall-space with a plaque from Jimmie Davis to Miller for running his successful local election campaign for state Governor. Al Montgomery missed her chance but received a gold watch from Miller as some compensation for her disc being cut out. She later died in an automobile wreck and we don't even know her full name."

Kitty Wells, born Ellen Muriel Deason in Nashville in 1919, had learned guitar from her daddy and was singing on local radio with her sisters (as "The Deason Sisters") as early as 1936. She became the first woman to top the country singles chart that summer of 1952 when "...Honky-Tonk Angels" climbed up and sat steady on the chart for six weeks, turning her into the first bona-fide female country star. Due to the honest treatment of its subject matter the record was promptly banned on many radio stations, and Wells was even persona non grata at the Grand Ol' Opry for a time.

Soon dubbed "The Queen of Country Music", Wells' career went on from one peak to another: inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1976; the song "...Honky Tonk Angels" was added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress in 2008; she became the third artist to receive the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, after Roy Acuff and Hank Williams; and she was the first female country star to have her own syndicated TV show.

Kitty Wells left us this past monday at age 92. I think of her often as her signature song was taught to me by my girlfriend a couple of years back and quickly became one of our staples to warm up by when we pick up our guitars. It made me more curious about 'answer songs' in general and hers and Hanks Thompson's songs specifically, for I've always been a Thompson fan as well so it tied up rather nicely. I recommend exploring her work and life further as it is a long and interesting career.

Comments

Great post....almost, like most versions of this story you failed to point out that Hank Thompson was not the first to record Wild side of Life which had already been recorded by Jimmy Heap, heres a link to get Heaps' original http://www.mediafire.com/?3bdm8foj5kt343u

Well, I did know about the first version and declined to mention it - no slight to Mr. Heap, but, this is something that has happened with an awful lot of famous 'hits' of one genre or another, frequently there is a lesser-known artist who cuts a song first, it goes nowhere nationally, and then some time later, a better-known name puts it out there again and it strikes gold. I chose to blow past that part of the story (sacrificing some detail) since it happens with SO many famous songs. Often the SAME person has to release a song more than once for it to take off. At least I got some of the facts on this one right that I saw distorted in other articles...